The Forest
by Shwuam
Summary: “He takes his hand... he puts it here.” My eyes became wide as I watched her, and I don't think I was breathing. “And you can't scream.” SasuNaru ONESHOT


She was only so little and only so young.

She would come into school sometimes with chalky pale skin and her eyes would be dim and **dead**. Her hair would be messy and didn't look as gorgeous as it used to.

Everyone thought she was sick at first. But these days would become so often, she would come to school with her 'ugly face' on, as one of the boys said.

All the teachers and students would say the same things, ask the same questions:

_What's wrong?_

_Are you sick?_

_Did you eat?_

_What's wrong?_

_What's wrong?_

_What's wrong?_

And she would put on this dreadful smile that made my stomach very sad and low and heavy like a rock. A wet rock. The smile would pull so tight and look so painfully fake that it gave the impression that even she knew that it was a **pathetic attempt at trying to fool herself, to fool us**.

So, because I wanted to be polite and nice and not bother her with the same things and the same questions, I would only talk to her _sometimes_. Not on those days where she had her ugly face on. Because whenever I talked to her on the ugly face days, she would look at me and my stomach would feel like it had that same wet rock inside of it.

But one day, one random, crazy, whoknowsit kinda day she came in with her ugly face on and no one was really surprised.

And when the teacher's phone rung and the teacher went to talk on it, the class erupted in quiet chatter. Like little mice running around looking for cheese! _Shshshshshshhhh_ kinda chatter. I stayed quiet, because it was only me, her, and another quiet boy at our table.

The boy was at ease and he read his book as peaceful as a windless day in the middle of July.

Now that I think of it, I've never really looked or talked to him.

Maybe one day.

I was erasing markings on my desk as I chewed on a piece of playdough. It was magenta colored, by the way, in case anybody was wondering.

She was staring.

I wasn't looking at where she was staring and I wasn't staring at her, cause that would be rude and on her ugly days I promised myself that I would be _polite _and _quiet_.

"Psss."

I looked up from my concentrated erasing and saw her looking at me with wet, hazy eyes. She looked like she was going to burst into tears and I instantly tried to remember which side of the room had tissues. Because in a lot of cartoons I watch at the community center on the dirty, old, tiny television set had girls crying.

And to help the girls stop their crying, us boys would give them a tissue.

"Naruto."

She was whispering, and to keep her happy and dry as a pair of winter-chapped lips, I whispered back to her.

"Yeah?"

She swallowed and put her chin on the dirty desk, covering her head with her arms and hands. But the _little_, itty, bitty cracks in between her fingers let me see her **dead** eyes and I was able to stare at her while being polite and quiet.

"I have bad dreams, Naruto."

I didn't say anything.

"They come back more and more, Naruto."

I didn't say anything at all. She lifted her head up and placed her hands on her lap in what looked like slow motion, and it felt like somebody's nail was slowly scraping down my skin. It was heavy like lead and made me feel tight.

"They have a man in them."

Her eyes became very far away, and she looked like she was in an old picture.

"He takes his hand..."

She lifted her hand, and I realized that this girl was very skinny. Maybe one day she could be one of the beautiful people that the big girls at the library always pointed at on their magazines.

"He puts it here."

She placed her hand over her lips and stared at me with these wide eyes. They looked afraid and surprised, as if that man had put his hand over her pretty, little lips right there in our class. My eyes became wide as I watched her, and I don't think I was breathing.

She whispered the next part, because somewhere along the way, we were talking _a little above_ whisper.

"_And you can't scream."_

That year, she got a full page in the yearbook that mourned her death.

I overheard the teachers talking to each other about how they had never heard such a case where an eight-year-old committed suicide.

I was sad because I knew that now she could never be a beautiful person on the magazine now.

- - -

The dream would begin during the night, because all the scary ones begin in the night.

It would be chilly enough that if there was enough light to see the details of your skin, you would see little, tiny bumps. You would take a long, hard sniff through your nose and it would feel as if icicles were blocking your air passages.

His fingers would feel like air, like they weren't there at all. All that was there were occasional sparks that were barley noticed if you weren't paying attention hard enough.

There was no moon in the black sky of this world, only an eerie glow that enveloped the forest from no specific direction.

The odd feeling of fear would engulf you and you felt like a child trying to understand what the adults during dinner were talking about. Confused, belittled, and weak. This is what you felt, and all you noticed was the horrible feeling of not knowing what was beyond those shadows that surrounded you in this absolutely hollow darkness.

There were lots of trees and the smell of earth would have been thick if you had been paying attention.

If you were _really_ observant, you would take notice that you were in something similar to a forest. A cold forest at night with no noise. No sticks would break and no animals would howl or chirp in panic.

Naruto found himself dreaming this same dream every single night. Nothing but the cold forest and the seemingly pointless cold with no noise and only your dangerous thoughts to lead your through the endless dream.

It was truthfully scary.

After four weeks of dreaming this dream, Naruto decided to stop standing in the middle of this forest and shivering his ass off.

He began walking very cautiously, his eyes darting to every single imaginary movement his foolish mind would conjure up. Only after what seemed like hours of wandering around the forest, he decided to run. As he ran, everything (including himself) would begin to feel better.

He would run until he woke up in the morning, out of breathe, sweaty, and very sincerely sore. And from then on, every single lonely night in his apartment would turn into a lonely night in the forest of him running all of his problems and fears away.

The boy felt powerful because he never tripped over a root, fell on a stone, clumsily knocked into a strong tree. He was invincible and could run through the forest feeling like a super hero. A frightfully amazing superhero that no root, stone, or tree could ever stop.

But a chest did.

"Oof!" he gasped before falling on the surprisingly soft ground, his palms not being scraped or pained by the smooth dirt that he collapsed on.

"Oh my, what is this?"

Naruto looked up and saw a tall man.

"Who're. . ."

Before Naruto could conclude translating his stray thought into a question, he felt a cold even more frigid than the temperature that enclosed his body take his hand and pull him up.

"Why are you running around like a maniac?"

Naruto swallowed thickly and squinted his eyes, trying to get a better look at the man's face that was basically completely hidden by shadow.

He suddenly felt his hand again, and suddenly noticed that he had never felt his hand in the entire history of this dream. He cupped his recently discovered hand in the still numb one.

When this mystery man had touched his hand, the feeling had returned. One could say that the dangerous attraction began right about there, or rather, when Naruto had heard that effortless voice that wafted into his head and concluded to make his head feel like cotton candy.

He looked up at the mysterious figure, and pressed his lips tightly together before speaking.

"I wanted to. . .stay safe?"

It sounded like a question rather than an answer, and Naruto asked himself why he was running around his own damned dream. He decided to promptly stop speaking as the other man replied.

"Ah."

The silence, for once in this deathly forest, was warm. If Naruto had, at that moment, decided to gently touch his fingers to his lips, he would've found a very content smile.

The man's hands found Naruto's shoulders, and he swiftly pulled the young boy close to him.

And Naruto saw his face.

His perfect, perfect face.

"Look, what are you doing h- - -"

"Wow. . ."

There was a silence before Naruto saw the man's thin, pale lips curve upwards to form an honest smile. He looked about ten years older than Naruto, who had _just_ turned an anxious 16.

He looked delicate, like a porcelain doll. Like his features had been painted on with a thin, precise brush. As if God himself has taken an _extra_ long time to simply perfect this one man.

- - -

Naruto's life became centered around those dreams.

He bought bottles of sleeping pills and tranquilizers all with the desire to achieve that dream and see that man.

He would even skip his school, lose valuable moments to learn precious information only to run around the silent forest trying to find the man.

It was to Naruto's disappointing discovery that finding the man was very rare. And one out of four or five times he would actually encounter the angelic face and freezing cold touch.

The few friends that the boy had would come into his home, expecting to find Naruto ill and would only be rewarded with a sleeping teenager, dreaming of running and running in search of his angel.

When Naruto was awake, when he wasn't at school desperately trying to make up for his many missed classes and understand the miscellaneous material that he had foolishly missed, he was usually in the shower crying.

The dream was so odd and confusing that it left him emotionally drained.

His skin became pale, dry, and chalky. A few exuberant girls at his school would poke at his complexion and pretend that Naruto was a vampire who hadn't fed in a long time.

This would also be because of his eyes, which were dimming and dying to a dull navy blue in replacement of a lively, fresh blue that rivaled the brightness of a clear, sunny day.

His formerly soft, thick locks of gold turned into dried stalks of rotten corn and no longer glowed with youth.

Naruto rarely ate a thing anymore, and would go days without ingesting a single piece of food or ounce of drink.

His thoughts became centered around that man.

"Sasuke."

Naruto said during one of his encounters with him.

"Hm?"

"I wish that you were real."

Sasuke, the man that Naruto so rarely got to see and so thoroughly and confusingly desired, looked up at him with very blank eyes. In fact, the man hadn't shown a flicker of emotion or care since the day Naruto had first met him.

He looked at Naruto and seemed almost angry his confession.

Naruto looked at him and didn't say anything at all.

"You are so silly, Naruto."

Naruto curiously furrowed his brow and opened his mouth slightly as if to ask Sasuke what he met by this.

"Please, oh please, tell me, idiot. Tell me why on this damned earth you would think that I'm not real?"

"This is a dream, Sasuke."

If Naruto hadn't been so eager to please the ebony-haired man, he would have added a 'duh' at the end of the explanation.

"If this was a dream, then you would not feel pain."

"I don- - -"

And Naruto felt the man upon him, his body temperature so cold that it felt like smooth, sleek steel was being pressed against his arms and legs. The only warm thing he felt seemed to feel suspiciously like lips on his neck that slowly slid upwards until Naruto was looking straight into Sasuke's eyes.

A cold hand was pressed against his mouth, replacing those numbingly warm lips.

The pain that followed was so intense that just as Naruto opened his mouth to let a scream emerge, nothing came out and no one in this silent forest could hear him.

- - -

"_He takes his hand..."_

"_And you can't scream."_

- - -

Naruto had never prayed in a dream before, of course, he had never been touched by a stranger forcefully in a dream, either.

He was in the forest, currently crouched behind a very large and presumably old tree, his hands clutched together and eyes closed so tightly that it looked as if he were trying to bare through a powerful rush of sour taste.

But he was not, he was instead trying to reach a deep, peaceful place deep within himself. Trying to communicate with the great force that he believed owned and ruled all.

_Dear God, _

_Let me wake up._

_I do not know what I have ever done wrong in this life, Lord._

_I am lost in my mind now, Lord, help me find my way out._

_But _please_, please let me wake up. _

_Amen_

As Naruto finished performing his Trinity, he felt a presence in front of him and opened his tightly closed eyes and saw the most beautiful man he had ever seen crouched in front of him with a frightfully stunning smile on his face.

"Naruto, are you praying?"

He looked amused, and Naruto looked frightened.

"Yes, because I want to wake up, Sasuke."

Naruto would tell Sasuke this every day, several times a day in fact, that he just wanted to wake up. He would insist that Sasuke was a dream, that the forest was a dream, that every that had happened in the last 'month' had been a dream.

Because Naruto had lived through a month in his mind, and he was afraid he was dead. He would insist to himself and to Sasuke that it was a dream, but that belief and determination was quickly slipping away.

Surely a mere dream couldn't last _this_ long, it couldn't feel _this_ real and painful.

"You are stupid, Naruto."

And Sasuke would tell him that no, it was not a dream.

That it was all real.

And Naruto didn't know what to do anymore.

Because he was beginning to believe Sasuke.

And that was probably the most frightening thought of all. That Sasuke was right, and that his "real" life was simply a silent forest where Naruto was trapped with nothing but useless trees and his rapist.

Naruto stared at Sasuke, who stared back, and he felt tears collect in the corner of his eyes. Sasuke's expression hardened for a moment before looking confused. Naruto had never cried in front of him before, and it made Sasuke tense and odd looking.

He decided to simply glare at the poor boy as he watched him collapse into broken, wretched sobs on the forest floor. Screaming and wailing like a child in a temper tantrum, only instead of crying over a simple thing like an extra serving of candy or a toy, he sobbed over the miserable thing in this forest that had slowly eaten all humanity in his chest and turned him into an empty, hollow toy.

He covered his face and through the cracks in his fingers, he saw that Sasuke wasn't glaring at him, but was simply staring at him.

He cried harder.

- - -

Naruto woke up covered in sweat, with dried tears all over his face, his skin worn raw in several places, and an extraordinary feeling of warmth on his lips.

He whipped his head around, grasping the fact that he was in his apartment.

Safe and sound.

He looked at his alarm clock, observing the time and date. He was late to school, predictably, and noticed that the date was November 4th. Naruto closed his eyes in an attempt to recall the last time he had closed his eyes to go to sleep, truly curious if he had been in his dreamworld for a month.

He had come home from a full day of school after taking his AP biology test that had been on. November 3rd.

"Oh. . ."

He covered his face and looked at his bedside table, seeing a bottle of sleeping pills.

He reached over slowly, and screwed the cap open before looking in and counting seven pills within the container. He wondered what would happen if he went back to sleep, if he would wake up this time. If the ferocious figment of his imagination known as Sasuke would appear in his dream this time.

Naruto didn't even want to sleep anymore, he just wanted to rid his mind of Sasuke forever.

The boy sat in his bed for a few more minutes, breathing deeply in an attempt to calm himself, to convince himself that he was awake, that Sasuke had been wrong all along and he was right. He would _always_ be right, because that was _his _dream.

He slowly stood up from his bed and stretched his surprisingly sore arms above his head, wondering how one could wake up from a dream and actually feel physically drained.

Naruto fished out an old phone book and called up a therapist, arranging an appointment.

Just as he hung up the phone and prepared himself to go shower, there was a knock on his door. He stood up to casually answer it, opening the door with a readied smile waiting on his face, ready to greet whoever waited on the other side.

There stood the most gorgeous boy he had ever seen, and behind him was a dark forest.

"_I told you it was real."_

**E N D**

Yeah, you better bet I know that was the weirdest story EVERRRRR!!!

I don't think I had any idea where this was going

But I know I wanted to make it a horror story

It pisses the crap out of me when horror films end with some lame excuses and like, NO REASON WHATSOEVER for all the shit that happened during the movie.

I'm like "really?! You're gonna have a flying, haunted zombie baby eater randomly killing hot blonde girls and you're not even gonna explain WHY?!"

I guess that was my rebuttal

not to mention its 4 am and i'm not sleepy yet :)

all questions in the story can be answered by your own mind

but I WILL tell you that the little girl was sakura (like that matters, haha)

and that the quiet boy was neji or gaara or somethin' (NOT sasuke)

and this is simply a oneshot

i'm sorry for making that so creepy, but we're all entitled to our random bursts of freaky

**THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH FOR READING! :)**


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